Fully-Booked: Literary Podcast

Our Verity movie review is here, and yes, everybody in that house is a villain. Full spoilers for the Colleen Hoover book and film.
Meaghan and Shirin caught Verity in an empty theater (lucky, because Shirin muttered about Colleen Hoover's characters roughly seven times). Anne Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, and Josh Hartnett plays Jeremy Crawford. Consider this Verity movie review a full Verity book vs. movie breakdown too: the manuscript, the canoe, the twin the movie quietly cut, and why Lowen trades the book's sleepwalking for Scotch and her late mom's Xanax.
Verity Movie Review: Cast and Performances
Anne Hathaway plays Verity Crawford and owns the film's best moment: the sit-up jump scare got both of us in the theater.
Josh Hartnett walks the line as Jeremy Crawford, grieving husband or something worse (his Netflix creature series Below dropped October 8, too).
Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh did not land for Meaghan; Shirin kept getting Fifty Shades of Grey flashbacks.
Costumes and the very strange boulder-filled Vermont house were highlights for both of us.
Verity Book vs Movie: The Biggest Changes
The novel gives the Crawfords three kids (twins Harper and Chastin, plus Crew); the movie cuts Chastin and makes Harper and Crew twins.
Book Lowen sleepwalks; movie Lowen self-medicates with Scotch and her late mom's Xanax.
The book keeps Verity's death inside the house; the movie puts her in the lake, which raises a few autopsy questions.
Verity Ending Explained (Spoilers)
Lowen finds Verity's letter to Jeremy under Crew's floorboard, claiming the manuscript was fiction and Jeremy caused her accident.
Both versions keep the ambiguity. Meaghan's verdict: everybody is the bad one.
An alternate ending reportedly made Lowen the clear villain and didn't survive test audiences.
Plot holes we couldn't shake: the lake, and a nine-year-old keeping that secret.
Colleen Hoover Adaptations and Range
Verity has always been Shirin's favorite Colleen Hoover book, and the least bananas, since it's a thriller and you walk in expecting chaos.
From Verity to All Your Perfects, Hoover's range is wild.
Screenwriter Nick Antosca (Cape Fear on Apple TV, The Act) brings real thriller credentials.
The Nightstand: Remain, Yesteryear and Trad Wife
Shirin finished Remain by Nicholas Sparks ahead of M. Night Shyamalan's film with Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor.
Meaghan followed Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke with Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, a wish-in-the-well pregnancy horror novel.
Book-to-Screen Adaptations Coming Up
Every trailer before Verity was an adaptation: Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro), Sense and Sensibility, Remain and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
Sunrise on the Reaping is definitely on our list. Klara and the Sun might be too.

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The Love Hypothesis movie review time, and honestly? Prime Video made a fake-dating rom-com that had us grinning the whole way through. Meaghan and Shirin dig into the adaptation of Ali Hazelwood's 2021 bestseller, a book that started life in 2018 as Star Wars fan fiction (yes, Reylo) before a literary agent came calling.
Directed by Claire Scanlon, The Love Hypothesis stars Lili Reinhart as Olive Smith, a Stanford PhD student who kisses the first guy she sees to sell a lie to her best friend Anh. That guy turns out to be Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), the most feared professor in the department. A fake relationship follows, and so does a truly regrettable amount of sunscreen. The casting twist is real, too: Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley. Somebody knew what they were doing.
From Reylo Fan Fiction to Bestseller: Ali Hazelwood's Origin Story
The Love Hypothesis began in 2018 as Star Wars fan fiction about Rey and Kylo Ren, then became Ali Hazelwood's debut novel in 2021
Shirin's love-hate relationship with Hazelwood: this one is still her favorite, and the later books haven't hit the same
Quick takes on Love, Theoretically, Bride, and Deep End
The Love Hypothesis Book vs Movie
Rights picked up in 2022, Claire Scanlon directing, and Ali Hazelwood on board as a producer
The book trope Meaghan is very glad got cut
The meet-cute kiss plays as properly uncomfortable on screen, and the movie calls it out
Adam's history with Olive (the expired contact lenses) shows up much later in the film
Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, and the Cast
Lili Reinhart's Olive reads like a real person, not a manic pixie dream girl
Tom Bateman nails awkward, intense, and uncomfortable (see: the sunscreen scene)
Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, and Arty Froushan round out a cast with real chemistry
The Star Wars full circle: Tom Bateman is married to Daisy Ridley
Women in STEM, Fake Dating, and the Third Act (Spoilers)
Olive's pancreatic cancer research and her ride-or-die friendship with Anh
Dr. Evil, the dog photos, and the Mountain Dew control sample
The Tom Benton twist and why the public confrontation didn't sit right with either of us
The Love Hypothesis Filming Locations: Montreal as Stanford
Concordia University and John Abbott College stand in for Stanford
Another Montreal shoot we spotted: 56 Days with Dove Cameron
Canadian Content and What's Next on Fully Booked
Below on Netflix: sea creature horror in Newfoundland with Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton
Yaga: Baba Yaga folklore meets murder mystery with Hudson Williams, Noah Reid, and Carrie-Anne Moss
Up next: Verity, the second Colleen Hoover adaptation of 2026

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Our Practical Magic 2 review is here, and yes, the Owens curse is back (poor Gary). Meaghan and Shirin went in braced for a nostalgia cash-in and came out pleasantly surprised.
Practical Magic 2 adapts Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic, the direct sequel to Practical Magic, with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as Sally and Gillian Owens and Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing returning as Aunt Jet and Aunt Franny. This time the story leaves the Massachusetts house behind. Kylie (Joey King) falls hard for Gideon, the death beetle starts chirping, and the whole family ends up in the English village of Thornfield chasing the roots of the curse, with Lee Pace along for the ride as Ian.
Practical Magic 2 and Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic
Practical Magic 2 adapts The Book of Magic, Alice Hoffman's direct sequel to Practical Magic, after the prequel Magic Lessons: The Book of Magic
Why this sequel feels book-based: a real beginning, middle, and end instead of a nostalgia patchwork
Meaghan's yearly fall rewatch of Practical Magic (1998) and Shirin's Sabrina the Teenage Witch era
The Owens Curse Returns: Plot and Ending (Spoilers)
Gary is gone, and Sally's forgetting spell keeps Kylie and Antonia in the dark about their magic
The death beetle chirps for Aunt Jet, who leaves behind the Book of Raven and a way to break the curse
Gideon's coma sends Kylie, Sally, and Gillian to Thornfield, England, where the villain twist lands
Aunt Franny's sacrifice and how Practical Magic 2 finally breaks the Owens curse
The Cast: The Original Coven and New Faces
Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing reunite, and the chemistry holds
Lee Pace as Ian, from Twilight to Bodies Bodies Bodies
Joey King and Maisie Williams as Kylie and Antonia, and why their bond barely registers
Botox, Beauty Standards and Frozen Faces on Screen
The online discourse around expressive performances in Practical Magic 2
Olivia Wilde's comments on casting actors whose faces still move
Why Dianne Wiest's performance stands out
What Worked and What Didn't
Worked: the aesthetic, Sally's costumes, the aunts, and a bigger world beyond the Owens house
Didn't: forced awkward humor, a thin sister relationship, and not nearly enough midnight margaritas
Split critic and audience scores, and whether a third film happens with no book left to adapt
Coming Up on Fully-Booked
Our interview with Judy Molland on The Making of a Witch
Fall and winter adaptations on our radar: Verity, Sunrise on the Reaping, Klara and the Sun, and Remain.

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The Making of a Witch began when Judy Molland found her own last name in a book about English witch trials.
Meaghan is flying solo this week (Shirin is out sick) with a pre-recorded interview she has been sitting on since the spring. Judy Molland is a first-time novelist, a former French and English teacher, and a practising Wiccan who spent years chasing a woman almost nobody bothered to write down.
The Making of a Witch, out now from She Writes Press, tells the story of Alice Molland, the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England, at Exeter in 1685.
Alice Molland: the last witch sentenced to death in England
Judy Molland was 25, at her father's vicarage, when she opened Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic and found her own surname in it Religion and the Decline of Magic
The line named Alice Molland as the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England, in 1685
Her father, a Church of England vicar, shut the book and told her never to mention that woman again. That shut the whole thing down for years
Molland is an unusual name in Devon, which is a large part of why Judy came to think of Alice as her ancestor
Writing a novel when the archive gives you one line
The only record Judy found was a 17th century Assizes entry naming Alice as tried for witchcraft on the bodies of three women
The page was part Latin, in a hand she could not read. The librarian pointed at the line and did nothing else
Marks on the record indicated Alice was poor, propertyless and alone. That is the whole evidence base
Having almost nothing turned out to be freeing, because it meant fiction was the only honest way in The Making of a Witch
The dream, the herbs, and a healer nobody could protect
Twenty years ago Judy started having the same dream: a horse chestnut wood, a cottage, a dark-haired woman with blue eyes beckoning her down the path. She knew it was Alice
Alice learns healing from Goody Luscombe, executed in the opening chapter while Alice, aged ten, is made to watch
Alice works with mugwort, slippery elm and comfrey, and her reputation as a healer is exactly what puts her in danger
Helping people is what Alice is for, and it is what will get her killed
Hearsay trials and how witch accusations actually worked
Judy read Exeter court records across two summers. A woman charged with killing a neighbour's pigs by looking at them. A starving widow refused food, then blamed when that household fell ill
A red bird on a windowsill. A woman seen with a toad. Enough to put someone in front of a court
Being tried was often the end of a life even without a hanging, because the label followed you
The Pendle witches in Lancashire and the East Anglia trials are the best known English cases
Wicca, the Exeter Castle plaque, and the sequel
Judy went to a Pagan Federation conference in London not long after her father's funeral and described it as coming home
She became the overseas member of a coven in Devon and helped put up the first English memorial to accused witches, outside Exeter Castle, in the 1990s Exeter Castle witches plaque
The moon rituals in the novel arrived because they arrived in her own life first. None of it was planned
Every witch hunt history she read was written by the rulers, never the accused. That was the driving idea
Next is a sequel following Alice's son Tommy, grown up. Judy calls it a novel of revenge.

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The Whisper Man book vs movie, and the gap between them is wider than it looks. Meaghan and Shirin dig into Netflix's adaptation of Alex North's 2019 thriller, out August 28, and work out what got lost on the way to the screen.

Alex North (the pen name of Leeds crime writer Steve Mosby) wrote a slow, atmospheric novel about a widowed writer, a copycat killer, and a father and son who barely speak. James Ashcroft's film keeps the bones and trims almost everything else. Meaghan came in having listened to the audiobook narrated by Christopher Eccleston, Shirin went in completely blind, and they landed in roughly the same place: the cast is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a script that does not give them much.
The Whisper Man Book vs Movie
Netflix released The Whisper Man on August 28, adapted from Alex North's 2019 debut thriller and directed by James Ashcroft for the Russo brothers' AGBO. Meaghan had just finished the audiobook. Shirin had read nothing. Both of them wanted more.
The story moves from England to America, which changes the setting, the town, and the way the characters talk to each other.
Meaghan listened to the audiobook narrated by Christopher Eccleston and recommends it, accent and all.
The reveal that Pete Willis is Tom Kennedy's father arrives immediately on screen. In the novel, you do not get it until roughly halfway.
What the Adaptation Cut
The film keeps the plot and drops the reasons, and that is where most of the frustration sits.
Francis Carter Jr's motive is fully drawn in the novel: forced as a child to witness his father's crimes, convinced he is rescuing neglected boys, killing them the moment they disappoint him.
The book gives you his POV, which makes the guilt and the enjoyment sit uncomfortably together. None of that is on screen.
The ending changes for Pete and for the resolution with Tom. The novel handles it as something closer to a dream, which is far more effective.
Shirin's biggest complaint: everything gets spoon-fed. The girl in the blue sweater would have hit harder if left unexplained.
Cast Notes and Performances
The cast is stacked to the point of distraction, and mostly they are doing more than the script asks.
Adam Scott as Tom Kennedy is the standout. He also played a grieving writer in Hokum, Damian McCarthy's film from May, which makes two this year.
Robert De Niro as Pete Willis is underused, largely scowling. In the novel, Pete is younger and still an active detective, so he actually participates.
Michael Keaton as Frank Carter is very good and turns up unannounced if you skipped the trailer.
Michelle Monaghan's Amanda Beck deserved far more screen time. She also recurs in The Shadows. Owen Teague as Francis Carter Jr barely gets any.
On the Nightstand
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, a dark satire about a trad wife influencer who wakes up in the nineteenth century. Anne Hathaway is set to star and produce for Amazon MGM.
Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer, on the pile next, part of a real wave of trad wife horror and satire.
Let's Kiss and Tell by Joss Richard, a fake dating romance between a sex columnist and a news writer. Easy summer closer.
Coming Up on Fully-Booked Podcast

An interview with Judy Molland about The Making of a Witch, her historical novel about Alice Molland, her likely ancestor and the last person sentenced to death for witchcraft in England.
Practical Magic 2, The Love Hypothesis on Prime Video, and Verity in October, which the trailers are very much selling as horror.

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